2012 Buchanan Award Winner

Donald Linebaugh, "Goulson Frame House Project"

The Paul Buchanan Award honors work on vernacular architecture performed in a format other than a published book or article; a specific criterion for the award is high quality of fieldwork.

This year’s Buchanan Award, chosen from an impressive field of eight contenders, goes to the Goulson Frame House project, an historic structures report conducted by Don Linebaugh and the University of Maryland Historic Preservation program, with the active participation and support by the nationwide network of descendants of Hans and Anna Goulson.

The Goulson Frame House, built circa 1880 and situated in the farm country of west-central Minnesota, is a modest one-and-a-half-story structure, two small rooms and a loft above, similar to our tour subjects from Wiota on Thursday, but with a vibrant traditional Norwegian paint scheme on the interior of blue, red, and green.

The Goulson Frame House project, while manifesting start of the art field research and archaeological practice, embodies topics and themes that have inspired inquiry and informed methodology since the Friends of Friendless Farm Buildings days:

• The pattern of early European-American settlement in a region;
• A European architectural tradition as modified in the American environment; and
• Investigation and recordation of heretofore under-documented architectural types and groups of people, emphasizing once commonplace historic building types that now have scarce surviving representatives.

An important and encouraging aspect of the Goulson House project reposes in its initiation, involvement, and sponsorship by the Goulson descendants, acting on a commitment to preservation in regard to their own vernacular architectural heritage.